[UPDATED: Please be sure to see the update, containing exclusive, previously unreported news, added at the bottom of this article.]

The BRAD BLOG learned this morning that a New Jersey judge has today given plaintiffs and Princeton University computer scientists the right to examine the state's Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screen voting machines which failed to record voter totals accurately, in at least six different counties, during the Garden State's recent Super Tuesday primary.

For those who haven't been able to keep up with it all, a post which quickly recaps the bulk of Sequoia's disgraceful NJ behavior can be read here.

We've also continued to cover (with complete exclusivity, unless someone else in the media cares to join us! Hello?) the saga of beleaguered Sequoia's fight for their very life, as they attempt to fend off a hostile take-over by competitor Hart InterCivic.

IMPORTANT/EXCLUSIVE UPDATE!:AP jumps in with a few more details raising a point which The BRAD BLOG can reveal here for the first time, concerning Sequoia's "intellectual property" rights. Namely, they neither own, nor control them, as admitted recently by the company's own CEO...

From the AP story:

A spokeswoman for Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia, Michelle M. Shafer, said the company will cooperate, noting that the judge will later devise an order to protect its proprietary information.

"We believe this result protects both the publics' interest and Sequoia's legitimate rights in its intellectual property and trade secrets," she said in an e-mail.

For all of Sequoia's alleged concerns about "intellectual property," we suspect the judge and the plaintiff's attorneys in NJ might be interested to know that Sequoia President and CEO Jack Blaine recently confirmed that they don't control the IP of Sequoia voting machines!

We can confirm that Blaine recently told employees, in a confidential, company-wide phone conference --- convened to inform them of the attempted takeover by Hart InterCivic, as they were forced to, after The BRAD BLOG broke the story --- that "it doesn't really matter" whether Sequoia has control of the intellectual property rights for its voting systems, since Sequoia has no claim to them.

As he admitted during the phone call, the IP rights for their voting systems are controlled not by Sequoia, nor by its alleged current owner, SVS Holdings, Inc. --- of which Blaine is also CEO/President, and VP/Spokesperson Shafer is a shareholding partner --- but by its supposedly former parent company, Smartmatic.

When he was asked by an employee, during the recent conference call, about the fact that the proposed deal would give Sequoia's intellectual property to its competitor, Hart, as confirmed by the 4/4/08 court documents we published [PDF], Blaine responded cavalierly: "It doesn't matter whether you have the IP rights, or you don't have the IP rights."

"We have the source code, and we have the right to modify it any way we want to modify it," he explained, concerning the company's agreement with Smartmatic. "So it doesn't matter really whether we have the IP or not."

"I didn't particularly want the IP [presumably when he negotiated Sequoia/SVS deal with Smartmatic]...as we've discussed in the past, I believe we've really come across the perfect time to change our portfolio going forward. And it's not gonna be dependent on the Smartmatic technology, or the IP or anything else. It's gonna be dependent on what we collectively believe the market, and what the future standards, will require."

In other words, again, from the admissions of Sequoia's own CEO and President, the company has no apparent claim over the IP rights for Sequoia's voting machines, including the rights for the machines whose independent examination is currently being negotiated with the judge in NJ.

We'd be happy to offer more details to either the judge or the plaintiff's attorneys working on the case, of course.

Prices now slashed in The BRAD BLOG's Fund Drive! Please support our continuing coverage of your election system, as found nowhere else. Click here for a number of cool new collector's edition Premium products now available starting at just $5!

I have to get this off my chest, so I'm going to unload here. I've been blogging about this at Dan's site and elsewhere, but this really needs to have a much larger audience.

Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos: his urging Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries, even if it means they have to switch affiliation, and vote strongly for Sen. Clinton. This is an intentional effort on his part to subvert the outcome of a U.S. national election.

I'm going to draw a couple of parallels here to illustrate. First, Cindy Sheehan and CodePink. RL targets her frequently during his shows, accusing her and CodePink of being un-American and undermining U.S. foreign policy and, by extension, our national security. In fact, all she is doing is exercising her constitutional freedoms to express herself openly.

Second, a hypothetical situation. Imagine an American-Islamic organization urging its national membership to vote strongly for a particular candidate in order to undo the campaign of a candidate that's pro-Israel/pro-nukes, going so far as to rile them up through its various channels of communication (radio, newspapers, mosques, etc.) to switch party affiliation during a primary election in order to thwart a particular candidate, with the ultimate goal being to prevent national voter will to run its course. Our corporate media and their pocketed officials would be all over that, calling it a threat to our national security.

Yet RL is doing exactly this, and not a peep from anyone. I realize that what he is doing is not illegal in many states, and possibly illegal in others, but given today's media influence that surpasses that of previous decades, this ability of a charismatic individual in media, or from a particular extremist-religious POV, or from any marginal yet influential extremist group to subvert national voter will in an election, and esp in a presidential election, should maybe be revisited by our courts.

Nice to see there are SOME judges left in this country who put accuracy and integrity of the so-called elections above the sniveling complaints of the crocked manufacturers of voting machines and their secret software. We haven't "elected" a president in this country since 1996. The 2000 "election" turned out to be a "selection" (wherein the US Supreme Court - with a majority appointed by Regan and Bush stopped the counting of votes long enough to "run out the clock" and declare Bush the winner by 543 votes). The 2004 election was stolen in Ohio as documented by many investigators, including the latest book by Richard Hayes Phillips - WITNESS TO A CRIME - A Citizens' Audit of an American Election where the proof offered is irrefutable with a CD showing thousands of documents illustrating exactly how it was stolen, including the letter from Diebold CEO Wally O’Dell assuring Ken Blackwell (Ohio SOS) Diebold “would do everything they could to deliver the election to George W. Bush.”

Even worse, since Limbaugh got away with his voter fraud he has taken it further. He is encouraging riots and mayhem in Denver. Rush Limbaugh is a terrorist in every way with his daily rantings of BS and idiocy. He is attempting to recreate an actual riot that caused massive damage. Is this not against federal law??? Just because he is listened to by older white men and women does not make it any less of a crime than attempting to seduce kids to gangs. His idea of truth is like a gang mentality. I hope someone lists his sponsor and let's at least hurt his pocketbook because if enough of us unite and refuse to support companies promoting this type of acts they will quit paying for him.

I'm thinking that there is a legal line between urging citizens to vote for a candidate for reasons having to do with that candidate, and urging citizens to vote for a candidate in order to subvert voter will in an election, and I think it may be time for our courts to define this line.

Just like there are currently legal lines between freedom of expression and inciting a riot. The line is where a person's right to express themselves results in another person's right to be safe in the one case, and where it subverts voters' collective will in the other case.

You can't stand up on a podium and tell people to throw rocks at the police. By the same thinking, maybe our courts should take a closer look at whether someone can get on the horn and tell listeners to reregister in a party they don't belong to and vote for a particular candidate because operatives in their real party are putting together a mudslinging campaign to attack that candidate in the general election, therefore they don't want the other candidate, who is the candidate who would be elected by the popular vote by their actual party members, to get the nomination, because they have no orchestrated mud campaign to defeat that candidate.

Somewhere in that clearly perverted scenario there must be room for common sense to prevail.

These are the organization I've found working on Voting Integrity Issues. I'd like to focus on the legitimate, honest, effective ones and dismiss the fraudulent or ineffective ones. If those distinctions can be made. Peace and this is Democracy.

These are the organization I've found working on Voting Integrity Issues.

First, you're working on Election Integrity Issues, not "Voting Integrity". The voters are doing just fine. Please leave them alone.

Beyond that, as you may suspect, I have very strong opinions on a number of the groups linked in your post. But, by way of not poisoning the well for the moment, I'll leave other folks to offer their opinions before I offer mine.

Too bad Florida Circuit Court Judge William L. Gary was more concerned in the corporate interest in DRE "software ballot boxes" rather than the "public interest" as is Judge Feinberg!!! (Judge William L. Gary denied plaintiff Christine Jennings’ motion to allow review of the software code for the ES&S DRE touch-screen machines used in the contested 2006 U.S. House race between Democrat Christine Jennings and Republican Vern Buchanan for Florida's 13th district where 18,000 votes mysteriously went missing from the machines.)

The revelation likely to come out of an examination of NJ's Sequoia DRE touch-screen voting application software is that it is remarkably unsophisticated. Any 3rd year Computer Science college student could design a better software system. The examination will likely find bugs in the base voting application software as well as the Ballot Definition Software written specifically for the NJ primary election in the weeks just before election day.

Finally, election oversight. I wonder if congress will join in on the review? Somehow, I doubt it, they seem to go right along with stolen elections. Absolutely, no questions asked. Personally, I don't think Republican congressmen should be allowed to ask questions during oversight hearings, they didn't bother to hold any oversight hearings during the time they had control of the house. Why give them equal time now?

of course, given that the CEO is so cavalier about the IP, he may feel the machines won't reveal anything incriminating.

on the other hand, given how hard they've fought this exposure, i'd say otherwise.

and given that the cavalier comment came on an 'in-house' conference call - meant i'm sure to reassure the troops - i'd qualify his opinion of the importance.

nevertheless, his admission that sequoia doesn't even own its own IP is pretty damning.

damn, this story should become an explosive scandal, especially considering the implications it carries for how thoroughly we've sold out our democracy - our press, our defense, our infrastructure, our representation, and our voting system - to the almighty market, the greedy mean and inhuman market.

Hell of an update Brad - way to put out the stringer (more to come, as they used to say on Johnny Carson, I am sure). Anyone who missed it - it is ADDED at the bottom of the original story. Sequoia/SVS does NOT own the Intellectual Property (IP) rights to the software, but they control the source code.

Not sure where this takes us legally, but I had mistakenly linked the IP rights to the source code, but as the Sequoia CEO Jack Blaine said about the source code, "...we have the right to modify it any way we want to modify it". Gee, do you think that could be done seripticiously during and just before a Presidential or any other election?

Nah! Not here!! Not in the UNITED States of Amerika!!! NEVVVVVVVVER!!!!

I'm not sure what you are looking for, but another group doing intresting work is - http://votingintegrity.org/ - The National Committee for Voting Integrity (NCVI) is an Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) project that brings together experts on voting issues from among computer scientists, elections administrators, voting rights advocates, policymakers, the media and the public.

I tend to follow the work of: votetrustusa, votersunite and verifiedvoting. Bev at BlackBoxVoting is also very dedicated.

Linda's right. Changing parties like that needs to be addressed. That's cheating.

I saved Gibbons' myspage page. I don't think the old cache is working any longer, not sure. There was that Mike Gannon type friend. There were all those funny tidbits. Mike Gibbons. That was a good one. He got busted and changed it to him with Bush Sr.. He scrubbed the blonde bimbo stuff. When will these chumps learn to clean up their internet crumbs?

#8 At the Democratic Underground election forum, there are some great posters along with others who appear to be republican plants. It's fairly easy to see who is who. Other than that, yeah, it's good to know Brad and others are here.

Keep plugging for exit polls and paper ballots, imho. They rigged 2000 and 2004, without doubt.

I think it's pretty clear (to me at least) that Move On has let down the progressives time and time again. Had they jumped on the election integity bandwagon, as so many of them begged them to do so in 2004 (and continue to to the same radio silence,) they could have stopped the Bush presidency in its tracks. If they mustered the full power of their membership to say BS to the 2004 election coup, and continued to beat that drumhead, the media would have had no choice but to cover it and the Bush presidency would be viewed as illegitimate.

Same thing with 9-11, which no one touches, yet is a powder keg just waiting to go off and bring all these bastards down. But they don't have the balls to stop it or even realize that they have the power to do so. Had Move On, with its 3 million-plus members, focused full power on either of these blackout issues, they could topple these crooks in short order. Seriously. They could end the Neocon reign within weeks. But they won't step up.

There are plenty of other so-called progressive organizations who continue to pull their punches, too. People for the American Way is another one. These are organizations who are doing good work but don't seem to really want to go to the mat or Still Don't Get It. I find it all sad and irritating.

Even the big so-called liberal magazines won't touch the blackout issues --- with the exception of Harper's, who bravely published Mark Crispin Miller's piece on the theft of 2004, and Rolling Stone with the Bobby Kennedy piece on same. But I've lost my patience with The Nation and The American Prospect and Mother Jones and am letting my subscriptions lapse on all of them, because they just Don't Get It.

Move On or PFAW could stop Bush tomorrow. But to do so they'll have to stick their neck out and tell the American people the truth. And they're obviously all too chickenshit to do that.

To offer a few more comments on the IP/Source Code matter. While I'm not an attorney, my understanding is that in order to claim IP rights, one has to assert that right.

As far as I know, Smartmatic (who, it's now clear, owns the IP rights to the software) has not chosen to do so. They have allowed Sequoia, if Blaine is to be believed, the right to modify their software, etc. So, it would seem, Smartmatic has essentially given up their assertion of IP rights.

Even if allowing Sequoia to modify their software wouldn't be considered an abandonment of IP rights, the fact that they have not attempted to protect it in either NJ, or other places where the Sequoia systems have been challenged or examined, seems to me they have no right to assert it now.

In anycase, Smartmatic *hasn't* asserted it, Sequoia has, but they have no claim over the IP, so they wouldn't seem to have standing to make such a claim. Anywhere.

Smartmatic might try to assert a claim, but then they would be publicly admitting that they didn't really divest of Sequoia after all, which they claimed they had done, when the federal investigators from CFIUS had them under investigation last year (which is what led to "selling off" Sequoia in the first place).

All it takes is for people to Turn off the TV, put the beers, and drugs down and get active en MASS. The powers that be, have a lot of plans, but they can not stop the power of the people. You are the people. I am the people. Nobody else is going to do this. It needs to be BIG. We need to ride these oath of office high level security pigs out of our country into a jail on a rail.

Thank god it's the weekend the fascist oath of office breakers can't push any more unconstitutional legislation. The last two days were insane. I feel like I was breathing the smoke from the burning Sequoia's.

Complexity should be avoided—simplicity is a goal in itself. Extra features are not needed; an approach that seems "too easy to be true" is in fact the best way. ... the very obvious approach is often the best.

"A former senior CIA counterintelligence operative believes the case “will never go to trial, because of all the ugly stuff that would come out” about Israeli activities in the United States.

Indeed, Justice Department attorneys have fought to keep “ugly stuff” from emerging in the trial of two officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, charged with accepting classified documents from Pentagon official Larry Franklin.

But the federal judge in the case has indicated he might not go along with their strategy. Last month Judge Thomas Ellis III indefinitely postponed the trial of AIPAC officials Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, which was scheduled to open next week."

If they can shut down a federal espionage trial indefinitely, they can sure as hell control the entire election process - and do.

Call it what it is - conspiracy.

CONSPIRACY TO COMMUNICATE CLASSIFIED INFORMATION TO AGENT OF FOREIGN GOVERNMENT

1. Defendant LAWRENCE ANTHONY FRANKLIN was employed by the United States government at the Department of Defense (DoD) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), International Security Affairs (ISA), Office of Near East and South Asia, Office of Northern Gulf Affairs, Iran desk, and held a Top Secret security clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). FRANKLIN'S office was located within the Pentagon, in the Eastern District of Virginia. FRANKLIN was also a Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve (USAFR).

"Smartmatic is privately held," Shafer, a former executive with a Texas-based computer voting company, said. "A controlling interest is held by its founder and CEO, Antonio Mugica, who holds dual Spanish and Venezuelan citizenship."

However, as Smartmatic's Uniform Business Report for the Florida Dept. of State, dated Jan. 27, 2003, reveals, three men named "Antonio Mugica" sit on the board of the company.

Antonio Mugica is the president; Antonio Mugica Rivero is chairman of the board, and Antonio Mugica Sesma, company director and father of the president, is reportedly the owner of the house on Dinner Key Drive in Boca Raton where the company was based.

This raises a number of questions.

How has a little family-run company of three relatives and two friends, all Venezuelans, based in a house in Boca Raton in 2003, been able to take control of the counting of the votes for 40 million Americans?

And why has the mainstream media ignored the important questions of ownership that surround Sequoia Voting Systems and the other private companies that count our votes?

How was this tiny backroom company able to attract four senior executives from the U.S. computer giant Unisys to fill the positions of president, two vice presidents, and corporate controller?

UNISYS - THE MOSSAD'S TROJAN HORSE?

Unisys is headed by Lawrence A. Weinbach, who is president, chief executive officer and chairman of the computer giant who provides computer equipment and software for all of the key agencies of the U.S. government and leading companies.

Under Weinbach, Unisys has integrated Israeli security software, provided by the Israel-based Check Point Software Technologies and Eurekify, into its own software.

Israeli software, written by Mossad-linked companies, now "secures" the most sensitive computers in the U.S. government and commercial sector.

Surely you're not discounting the direct evidence of Israel's role in these conspiracies to control the US electoral and foreign policy agenda or otherwise justifying it by stating that "everyone else does it?"

Surely that's not how you meant for that to come across.

Surely you want foreign espionage and theft of state secrets regarding nuclear weapons to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?

I know you and I have been suspecting and getting circumstantial evidence (which is admissible in court BTW) that the military oil complex is active in the electronic voting machine industry.

It has been revealed (and covered up) in the past few days, that they have been massively active in injecting propaganda into the MSM:

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

(NYT, emphasis added). And remember that a while back a defense contracting entity tried to take over directly one of the evoting machine companies.

If I could find that map I put up about Suntron, everything about that outfit smells MIOC to me, from the funding to the design, parts and testing of the Hart system.
Then they turn around and have the balls to show their cards by having Kwaidan consulting, a Suntron insider test the Sequoia system?

That told me right away that the two are connected somehow, maybe the mom and pop shop by Tony Mugica talked about above by plunger

Everytime I try to research away from this theory the spooky looking bastards start coming out of the woodwork again and again.

Espionage is usually part of an institutional effort (i.e., governmental or corporate espionage), and the term is most readily associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies, primarily for military purposes, but this has been extended to spying involving corporations, known specifically as industrial espionage. Many nations routinely spy on both their enemies and allies, although they maintain a policy of not making comment on this. In addition to utilizing agencies within a government many also employ private companies to collect information on their behalf.

#18..This is a subject that disturbs and puzzles me. Taboo subjects with progressives.Homeland Security wants to build a huge "germ factory" in the piedmont NC area. It is to be the size of 5 giant wal marts. 2,000,000 people in close proximity. There was one on Plum Island NY that had a huge melt down due to a power failure. We can thank that event for West Nile virus and hoof and mouth disease in the US. The dem. gov. is neutral, state and fed. politicians are for it..JOBS...An activist friend says most locals don't want to hear about it.Some sociologist should do a study on apathy.

My activist friend did not tell me the details on Plum Island...although she confirmed the facts.. Rense.com did. Homophobic and racist website. Maybe if "those" people go further to the right and WE go further to the left. ..the progressives will be the new middle.

My "opinion" still holds there Plunger, they use the wireless technology to get into "the last mile" of Power Line Networking, they use repeaters to jump the transformers. Soon it won't even require that "last mile"

There will not be a wireless card or a network cable to be found after that around ANY server or PC...just plug it into any 120 v wall outlet and you're in.

That's the future my friend, if it isn't here already.

The Government has been playing with G-Line since '52, that tells me a lot

We don't want to be like the wimpy MSM and cut ourselves down by saying we have no evidence. Do not forget this about evidence:

The popular notion that one cannot be convicted on circumstantial evidence is false. Most criminal convictions are based, at least in part, on circumstantial evidence that sufficiently links criminal and crime.

(Circumstantial Evidence, emphasis added). So, if circumstantial evidence can be used in criminal trials, it can certainly be used in evote machine civil trials.

Speaking of Limbaugh,and his comments and dreams about the convention: All that would have to happen is for a few of his groupies to start a riot, get arrested, and then claim Rush told them to riot!
Limbaugh had better hope that nothing happens!

This is wonderful news. Today I met with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (one of the good guys) and asked her to write legislation to make clear that any voting machine, including optical scans, source code is open to public inspection. I think she'll do it.

in kindergarten we all learned that the sum of the parts cannot be greater than the whole
i am going to re post this until someone explains to me how this precinct and many others report more reform voters than r registered and /or why we should believe any results from a tape that obviously has a false result
from john howards info
0005 AVALON WARD 1
VOTES PERCENT

99 i am not talking about the percentages at all
read the post
1 reform voter registered but 2 reform voters "reported" on election day?
i dont mean to be rude but folks dont seem to get it is an impossible result
if the machines "brain" allows for posting 1 false result,it will allow,in fact is programmed for a false result
in fact some of the first 400 precincts in allegheny county report no registered reform voters but still report reform voters on election day
this is 1 plus 1 math,and its right in front of all of us

It says "VOTES PERCENT", which, even if it didn't, would be obvious because you cannot have, say, 2.54 reform voters. There is no such thing as a .54 voter --- it's either a whole voter or none at all --- but there is such a thing as 2.54 percent of total voters or of total votes. I'm not arguing whether whatever you read indicated there were more votes than voters, but the evidence you have supplied doesn't make the case.

Well... never mind. Perhaps the presentation is just confusing to read without enough spaces between the stats. In any case, please don't repeatedly post the same thing. Somebody will address your concern if they are going to and not if they aren't. Thank you.

I believe you're misreading Karen's post (easy, since we don't use a fixed-size font here). The "2.54" number you refer to is actually VOTES=2 PERCENT=.54

Karen -

As I recall, NH allowed polling-place registration on Election Day. If that precinct only had 1 Reform Party voter, but another registered as Reform on the day of the election, that would explain at least that point in your numbers above.

Yuh, I believe you are right... and that's why I posted the caveat because I kept staring at those numbers and it was not jibing with what Karen was saying. I finally noticed the space between the numbers... which I should be used to because this sort of thing happens every single time someone tries to post stats, but it got me anyway.

Maybe when yer rich you can get somebody to write you up some code for a stat framework button and everybody can then figure out what everybody else is talking about....

********** (DEMOCRATIC) **********
i went back to bbv and found one that shows 0 reform voters because yes the spacing after i copied makes it hard to read///kurt on bbv says no reform votes should be listed as its a closed primary....if u r familiar with bbvs site kurt is an election official from pa
i am srry if i broke some posting rules but i think this impossible result (more reform voters than registered show classic "tag" )
i am rolling my eyes at myself because i didnt make it clear this is pa not nh...no same day registration in PA
thank you for taking the time to look

{Ed Note: I edited this to include the # and % symbols and correct a typo, for clarity's sake.... Plus, it might be well to inform everyone that no matter how well you get the numbers to line up in the comment box, in your draft, or from wherever they were copied, they squeeze up to very nearly completely unintelligible here once you hit the post button. --99}

This "intellectual property rights" claim is little more than a ruse. They have the right to financial gain from their coding. Nobody is denying them that right. But they do not have the right to keep that coding secret. We, as a public, have the right to verify that the code is written in a way that is legitimate.